History

A Guardian best history book of 2016Eccentric, shy aristocrat ... or mad, bad and dangerous to know?Neighbour Jane Austen found the 3rd earl of Portsmouth a model gentleman and Lord...

'Tim Tate, in Hitler's British Traitors, [explores] the entire grimy landscape of British treachery during the Second World War and the astonishing rogues' gallery of traitors working to help Nazi...

April 1945. As Allied bombs rain down on Europe, a 400-year-old institution looks set to be wiped off the face of the Earth. The famous white Lipizzaner stallions of the...

Peter Pugh presents his selection of - not the best, fastest, most successful or richest - but the 50 most influential British men and women of the modern world -...

Churchill's wise words about the love of country have rallied nations and made Churchill our greatest national hero. The Patriot's Churchill shows Sir Winston's view of the British way by...

John Manners, Marquess of Granby, famously led a cavalry charge during the Seven Years War, losing both hat and wig. A commander of skill and courage, he was cherished by...

During 1940 the German army swept with devastating speed across the Low Countries and into northern France and drove Allied forces back into a small pocket around Dunkirk. Without a...

The drastic railway closures of the 1960s led to the slow decay and re-purposing of hundreds of miles of railway infrastructure. Though these buildings and apparatus are now ghosts of...

Eighty years on from the beginning of the Second World War it is easy to forget that, for a time, democracy, the rule of law and even everyday values of...

On 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sat tensely at a microphone, using radio to declare that 'this country is at war with Germany'. During the ensuing wartime years,...

As Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the ensuing years saw the collapse of South Africa's apartheid regime, John Carlin ('one of the great post-apartheid chroniclers' Financial Times) was...

Few historical figures are as well-known as Napoleon Bonaparte, and yet the Emperor's ten-month exile on the small island of Elba is virtually unexplored. Now, for the first time, we...

Rummage tells the overlooked story of our throwaway past. Emily Cockayne extracts glittering gems from the rubbish pile of centuries past and introduces us to the visionaries, crooks and everyday...

World War One changed the course of history. And not only on a global scale as borders shifted and battles raged, but on a local level, when sons failed to...

On returning from Germany on 30 September 1938 after his agreement with Hitler on the carve-up of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain addressed the British crowds: 'My good friends... I believe it...

What happens when you reach the threshold of life and death - and come back? As long as humans have lived on the planet, there have been wars, and injured...

This is a rare account of the horrors of the WWII death camps from someone who experienced them. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Prague, Hoffman lost his entire...

A STORY OF UNSUNG BRAVERY AT A DEFINING MOMENT IN BRITAIN'S HISTORY'Superb' Stephen Fry'Thrillingly told' Dan Jones'Fascinating' Neil MacGregor'Astonishing' Peter FrankopanWe like to think we know the story of how...

The Boys of '67 and the War They Left BehindThe human experience of the Vietnam War is almost impossible to grasp - the camaraderie, the fear, the smell, the pain....

The Boys of '67 and the War They Left BehindThe human experience of the Vietnam War is almost impossible to grasp - the camaraderie, the fear, the smell, the pain....

Whitaker's Concise 2020 is the definitive reference guide to the UK. The concise edition is a UK-centric gold-mine of information with enormous breadth of coverage. At a fraction of the...

Maud Berridge (1845-1907) was the wife of a Master Mariner, and she travelled with him on at least five occasions (1869, 1880, 1882, 1883, 1886), sailing to Melbourne with emigrants...

Across almost 50 years, Winston Churchill produced more than 500 paintings. His subjects included his family homes at Blenheim and Chartwell, evocative coastal scenes on the French Riviera, and many...

Prior to Phil Stern's death on December 13, 2014, his original, unfinished, tattered wartime memoir was discovered, stashed away in an old folio box in his cluttered Hollywood bungalow. Best...

Winner of the Mbokodo Award for Women in the Arts for Literature, the ATKV (Afrikaans Language and Culture Association) Award for non-fiction and the kykNet/Rapport Award for non-fiction. 'Here was...

WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE 'Beautifully told' John Le Carre 'More than just history' Michael Palin 'Truly exceptional' Jon Snow 'Absolutely remarkable' Edmund de Waal 'Beautifully written' Stephen...

'A mesmerizingly fascinating tale, one astonishing adventure after another. I could not stop reading this beautifully written book.' Michael Finkel, author of The Stranger in the Woods'A unique history of...

From a political cult to the heart of the Washington establishment - the bizarre and untold story of how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of US military...

Dotted across homes in Britain are people who were witnesses to one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Yet their memory of India's partition has been shrouded...

The remarkable memoir of Zuzana Ruzickova, Holocaust survivor and world-famous harpsichordist. Zuzana Ruzickova grew up in 1930s Czechoslovakia dreaming of two things: Johann Sebastian Bach and the piano. But her...

'A travelogue and memoir to rank alongside anything by Chatwin or Thubron' Jim Crace'A most absorbing and rewarding book' Michael PalinA moving portrait, part history, part memoir, of Sudan -...

The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered...

When Hitler ordered the north of Nazi-occupied Norway to be destroyed in a scorched earth retreat in 1944, everything of potential use to the Soviet enemy was destroyed. Harbours, bridges...

It is easy to see bicycles as commonplace machines, but at the end of the nineteenth-century there was no other piece of technology which attracted the same level of excitement,...

In late July 1776, fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Francisco Velez de Escalante set out from Santa Fe to chart a route to the new Spanish missions in California. The...

Along the Bering Strait, through the territories of the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia, Bathsheba Demuth explores an ecosystem that has long sustained...

An engaging and original account of 1921, a pivotal year for Churchill that had a lasting impact on his political and personal legacy"Important . . . Its power lies in...

Black Ops is a thrilling compendium of undercover warfare from around the world. Here you will meet the most hardened soldiers and operatives facing extraordinary dangers deep behind enemy lines....

The story of a fascinating man who connected the great politicians, artists and thinkers at the height of British global power and influence. A famed aesthete, politician and patron of...